Solitude is the engine of independent thought—a usual precondition for real creativity. It gives us a chance to commune with nature, or, if we’re feeling ambitious, to pursue some kind of spiritual transcendence. - The New Yorker

If the saying ‘knowledge is power’ is true, then most people hold an indefinite amount of power in their pockets. And, in this light, it’s curious that someone would choose to relinquish that power by avoiding information. - Psyche

Recent neuroscience discoveries reveal a chilling picture: Your brain on revenge looks like your brain on drugs. Brain imaging studies show that grievances—real or imagined perceptions of injustice, disrespect, betrayal, shame, or victimization—activate the “pain network,” specifically the anterior insula. - Slate (MSN)

“Certainty serves a powerful social identity function. Declaring a clear position, especially a strong one, signals belonging. … Certainty is rewarded not just with clarity, but with community. Ambivalence, by contrast, is lonely.” - Salon

And vice versa, of course. For instance: James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, and Oscar Wilde all found some freedom in France, but Charles de Gaulle? He loved Ireland. - Irish Times

There’s “a growing wave of collaborative projects in which Latin American LGBTQ+ communities preserve and share their struggles and triumphs. They digitize photos, collect testimonies, and build databases of letters, personal memories, and other items that have survived dictatorships, censorship, and stigma.” - Wired

“(The 21st-century’s neo-burlesque) feels relevant to 2025 – in step with drag and queer culture, and in line with the broader movement towards diversity and inclusivity that we've seen in the last decade. Yet what's surprising about some of the new burlesque offerings is how old-fashioned they seem.” - BBC

“Universities and artists would have funding withheld if they fail to act against antisemitism, AI tools would be banned from sharing Jewish hatred, and the government would have new grounds to deport visitors under a wide-ranging plan put forward by Australia’s antisemitism envoy.” - The Guardian

The campaigns seemed to me to have been largely successful – some towns had sold all their listed properties. By attracting international buyers to a house that “costs less than a cup of coffee”, as one piece put it, some of Italy’s most remote towns now had new life circulating through them. - The Guardian

Advocacy emerges from discontent. In the arts, it’s often borne of witnessing creative practice undervalued, institutions destabilised and public funding eroded. These grievances are real and deeply felt. But passion alone, when untempered, can be self-defeating. - Arts Hub

On certain key points, the two judges disagreed with each other—so thoroughly, in fact, that one legal scholar observed that the judges had “totally different conceptual frames for the problem.” - The Atlantic

“It's the idea of health professionals ‘literally prescribing you a community activity or resource the same way they'd prescribe you pills or therapies.’ ... The prescriptions include exercise, art, music, exposure to nature and volunteering, which are known to have enormous benefits to physical and mental health.” - NPR

In the past 18 months, the Punta Gorda Symphony and the Fort Myers-based Southwest Florida Symphony have gone under. Meanwhile, the Sarasota Orchestra and Naples Philharmonic are doing rather well — and there are reasons for the difference. - Naples (Fla.) Daily News

Slatkin held the post — in this particular case, a sort of interim music director position — twenty years ago, from 2006 to 2009, between the tenures of music directors Kenneth Schermerhorn and Giancarlo Guerrero. With Guerrero having stepped down, Slatkin is returning for another three-year term. - WZTY (Nashville)

“The ascent from one method (purely mechanical recording on a horn) to the other (electrical recording with a microphone) was more significant even than the later leaps from wax cylinder to flat disc, shellac to vinyl, mono to stereo, analogue to digital or CD to streaming.” - Gramophone

What is original, real, and distinctive about black Southern culture is still often distorted or dismissed as primitive. And that is true not only in the South but in the wider American culture. - Hedgehog Review

“The theft of the materials, stored on five thumb drives, … along with footage, show plans and concert set lists, … happened on July 8, two days before Beyoncé began a four-day residency at Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium.” - AP

One of the highlights of this season has fallen victim to a baffling Venezuela travel ban. Gustavo Dudamel can no longer bring his Simón Bolivar Symphony Orchestra in August. That now means that Dudamel will spend only a single week at the Bowl during his penultimate summer as L.A. Phil music director. - Los Angeles...

The invitation to contribute to the redesign will therefore show two things. It will tell us how the country sees itself. It will also demonstrate the contradictions around national symbols and the exclusions they can produce. - The Conversation

Nazi interest in the Bayeux tapestry may seem surprising to British people, where the tapestry is considered a symbol of a singularly significant moment in Britain’s history. However, just as politicians in modern Britain have found it tempting to reference the tapestry. - The Conversation

The Hirshhorn, Asian Art, African Art and American Indian museums have been closed for about three days. - WTOP

The 2-year-old company is turning this aging warehouse into a modern stonecutting factory capable of quickly producing highly detailed decorative facades, museum-grade marble sculptures, and towering stone monuments. The company will soon be trying its robotic arms at an even grander project: reinventing the way buildings get built. - Fast Company

“We’re having trouble attracting young people, whereas in other countries, like China, buyers are on average in their thirties,” Magda Danysz, vice president of the CPGA, told Le Monde. “Priorities have changed in France too; it’s the experience more than the object.” - ARTnews

To call this enormous replica, on display at the Reading Museum, complete is not to call it completely accurate, mind you. The thread is worsted and colored with synthetic dyes, so the colors are brighter, and — it was the Victorian era, after all — the original’s more lewd images were bowdlerized. - The...

Because we’re social creatures, your recommendation page will pressure you to watch or participate in these trends, so you can feel caught up on the latest cultural references. - LitHub

“The law contains protections for school and local librarians and staff and is, notably, the first to guarantee writers and readers a right to sue for censorship, according to PEN America.” - Publishers Weekly

There are certain books where even if you’ve already solved the murder, even if you already know how it’s all going to turn out, you still don’t mind reading it again because the pleasure there isn’t really the ending but rather the journey. - LitHub

How exorbitant? A license for a digital copy of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 costs $51.99. Connecticut has already passed a law (not yet in effect) to rein in such pricing; New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Hawaii have similar legislation in the works. - The New York Times

Okay, there were no typewriters then; it was a scribal error — and it led to serious confusion about genre. The eureka moment by two researchers at Cambridge makes sense of that confusion. - Mental Floss

At the Pannonhalma Archabbey, founded in 996, conservators are removing 100,000 books from the library shelves for disinfection from an infestation of bread beetles, which like to eat the gelatin and starch-based adhesives used in medieval books - AP